24-hour load and supplemental teaching

Please refer to your 2008-2011 Faculty Contract, especially MOU XIII on p. 94

Last year the Faculty Association was told that the administration intended to begin to enforce two provisions of the contract which affect spring-summer teaching. D 4.1 says that faculty must teach “not less than 24 … credit hours over a three semester appointment.” This means that if you teach fewer than 24 hours in fall and winter, and teach spring 2009, the total for your supplemental appointment will be reduced by whatever is needed to make up 24 first. So, for example, if I taught 23 hours in fall + winter and offered to teach 6 hours in spring or summer, I would receive supplemental pay as per contract for only five hours. (If you have banked hours, you may use those to make up any deficit.)

Those faculty teaching in summer 2009 will need to schedule at least 24 hours for fall-winter 2009-2010 or incur a similar penalty.

The FA and VPAA negotiated an MOU (p. 94) that specified that this provision would not be enforced for spring-summer 2008, but conceded that the administration could enforce it thereafter (i.e., this year). That MOU was based on the understanding that deans and department chairs would inform faculty about this provision for 2008-2009, so that no one would be surprised this spring-summer. Evidently some faculty have been taken by surprise.

Please feel free to talk with your FA officers, board members, or floor reps if you have any questions about these contract provisions. And you should talk with your department chair and dean about the extent to which you were or were not warned that the administration would enforce this provision for spring-summer 2009.